1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to an apparatus and method for generating music data and a medium for providing music data, and more particularly to a music data generating apparatus and method and a medium for providing a program for generating music data that are suitable for synchronous control processing among multiple incorporated computing units.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a music data generating apparatus which contains a plurality of computing units and generates music data by interlinking these computing units and performing operating processes, if it is decided that, in accordance with some kind of timing among the computing units, the music data generating processes of other units have been completed (synchronization has been achieved), when each computing unit has received notification that synchronization has been achieved, in the past, normally a method has been used whereby the notification is received either passively by means of an interrupt from another computing unit, or actively by sequentially confirming specified variables corresponding to synchronization information that have been assigned in advance in a main memory.
Nevertheless, when an interrupt is passively received by each computing unit, it is necessary to incorporate into each computing unit a processing content that differs from the normal processing flow, and the interrupt process itself also becomes a complex and troublesome process for the computing units (e.g., saving of the working register, etc.). Moreover, in the case where each computing unit actively operates by frequently accessing a main memory and sequentially confirming specified variables corresponding to synchronization information, since several computing units are frequently and continuously accessing the common part (main bus) of the main memory, due to the complexity of this accessing process, the process often interferes with the process of accessing the main memory by other computing units.